So Long, Mittens!

So Mitt Romney dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination yesterday. His farewell to the campaign was ... well, let's take a look:

Governor Romney’s Address to the Conservative Political Action Committee –
February 7, 2008

I want to begin by saying thank you. It’s great to be with you again. And I look forward to joining with you many more times in the future.

I can't tell if the double entendre there is intentional. Normally I'd say he just misspoke, but see what he does next:

Last year, CPAC gave me the sendoff I needed. I was in single digits in the polls and I was facing household Republican names. As of today, more than 4 million people have given me their vote for president, less than Senator McCain’s 4.7 million, but quite a statement nonetheless. 11 states have given me their nod, compared to his 13. Of course, because size does matter, he’s doing quite a bit better with his number of delegates.

Keep those mildly risque one liners coming hard and fast, Mitt!

To all of you, thank you for caring enough about the future of America to
show up, stand up and speak up for conservative principles.

As I said to you last year, conservative principles are needed now more than ever. We face a new generation of challenges, challenges which threaten our prosperity, our security and our future. I am convinced that unless America changes course, we will become the France of the 21st century—still a great nation, but no longer the leader of the world, no longer the superpower. And to me, that is unthinkable.

Clever use of the "France sucks!" meme, Governor. Although I do have two questions here:

1) You're saying we need to "change course" by adhering to the conservative principles that, for better or worse, are held by the very people currently running the country. Can I get a "WTF" here?

2) Whether or not you're right that "unless America changes course" we're destined to become just like France, since you've expressed that thought, it is "thinkable" that this could happen. Proofreading is your friend. Your speechwriter, alas, is not.

Simon Peres (sic), in a visit to Boston, was asked what he thought about the war in Iraq. “First,” he said, “I must put something in context. America is unique in the history of the world. In the history of the world, whenever there has
been conflict, the nation that wins takes land from the nation that loses. One nation in history, and this during the last century, laid down hundreds of thousands of lives and took no land. No land from Germany, no land from Japan, no land from Korea. America is unique in the sacrifice it has made for liberty, for itself and for freedom loving people around the world.” The best ally peace has ever known, and will ever know, is a strong America!

The Native Americans, Mexicans, and Spanish would like to have a word with you about what happened in the previous century, Governor. And, while it's technically true that we "took no land" from Germany or Japan, we do still have tens of thousands of troops on military bases in those countries. While I'm picking nits, I'll point out too that the Korean War (1) isn't really "over," (2) involved us fighting for our ally, South Korea - so taking their land would have been an unusual exercise in colonialism, and (3) we have tens of thousands of troops there, too.

And that is why we must rise to the occasion, as we have always done before, to confront the challenges ahead. Perhaps the most fundamental of these is the attack on the American culture.

Yes, we face threats from global warming, the possibility of having reached "peak oil," challenges to our economic hegemony from China, the prospect of a global recession, continuing military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and (as your party unceasingly reminds us) from terrorists like Osama bin Laden - but the "most fundamental" challenge facing the country is an "attack" on "the" American culture. Way to keep your eye on the ball, guy.

Over the years, my business has taken me to many countries. I have been
struck by the enormous differences in the wealth and well-being of people of
different nations. I have read a number of scholarly explanations for the
disparities. I found the most convincing was that written by David Landes, a
professor emeritus from Harvard University. I presume he’s a liberal–I guess
that’s redundant.

Heh, nice one. "Liberal Harvard professors" are almost as good a gag as "France sucks!" Although - wait, you're convinced of something by a liberal professor? Rush ain't gonna be happy about that, dude.

His work traces the coming and going of great civilizations throughout history. After hundreds of pages of analysis, he concludes with this:If we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes all the difference. Culture makes all the difference.

Wait, what makes all the difference again?

What is it about American culture that has led us to become the most powerful nation in the history of the world? We believe in hard work and education. We love opportunity: almost all of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants who came here for opportunity—opportunity is in our DNA. Americans love God, and those who don’t have faith, typically believe in something greater than themselves—a “Purpose Driven Life.” And we sacrifice everything we have, even our lives, for our families, our freedoms and our country. The values and beliefs of the free American people are the source of our nation’s strength and they always will be!

So, to recap: American culture makes us awesome; American culture consists of hard work, education, opportunity, and God. Also our willingness to sacrifice for our families, freedoms, and country. I'm having a hard time seeing anything on that list that doesn't apply equally well to ... anywhere else on Earth, actually. I guess it's true that most other places don't have the same freedoms or opportunities that Americans have, but that doesn't mean the people living there aren't willing to sacrifice themselves for what freedoms and opportunities they do have.

And while I do appreciate the shout out to Americans who "don't have faith" I'm not sure that Rick Warren is the "something greater than themselves" that they belive in. Just an FYI!

The threat to our culture comes from within. The 1960’s welfare programs created
a culture of poverty.

Hold up, man. Is the "culture of poverty" related to "the American culture"? If not, are you saying poverty is un-American? Because if you are, I'm probably down with that. Poverty sucks.

Some think we won that battle when we reformed welfare, but the liberals haven’t given up. At every turn, they try to substitute government largesse for individual responsibility. They fight to strip work requirements from welfare, to put more people on Medicaid, and to remove more and more people from having to pay any income tax whatsoever.

Ah. So, no. You're saying that attempts to alleviate poverty are un-American. I'm not so much down with that, I'm afraid. Allow me to point out that it was Bill Clinton who signed welfare reform into law; I'm pretty sure you're not claiming him as a conservative, so technically "we" didn't reform welfare. Allow me further to snicker at your outrage over the alleged liberal conspiracy to keep "more and more people from having to pay any income tax whatsoever" after your man W. and your fellow Republicans in Congress enacted dramatic tax cuts whose permanence you're collectively fighting for. How is it OK - laudable, even, mark of a True Conservative - to reduce taxes on rich and middle-class people and then be offended at reducing taxes on poor people?

Mitt? Little help?

Dependency is death to initiative, risk-taking and opportunity. Dependency is a culture-killing drug—we have got to fight it like the poison it is!

I can see how dependency is "death" to initiative. But how does dependency reduce risk-taking and opportunity? Aren't the people who are dependent on government support precisely the people with nothing to lose for whom taking risks and gambling on the opportunities they have makes the most sense? For the sake of argument, let's say you're right that dependency on government handouts is bad - doesn't it follow that we should stop giving handouts to business, since we're killing their initiative, risk-taking, and opportunity?

The attack on faith and religion is no less relentless.

Didn't you just say that people without faith were OK, because they believed in something greater than themselves? And if that's true, is an attack on faith really that big a deal? If faith is under attack, how come a big majority of Americans are Christians, including an overwhelming majority of our Congressmen and Senators. Three of the sitting Justices on the Supreme Court are conservative Catholics. The President is an evangelical Baptist. What on Earth are you talking about?

And tolerance for pornography—even celebration of it—and sexual promiscuity, combined with the twisted incentives of government welfare programs have led to today’s grim realities: 68% of African American children are born out-of-wedlock, 45% of Hispanic children, and 25% of White children. How much harder it is for these children to succeed in school—and in life. A nation built on the principles of the founding fathers cannot long stand when its children are raised without fathers in the home.

So.... tolerating/celebrating porn = kids born "out of wedlock"? I ... don't think that's how it works, dude. While we're talking about the twisted incentives of government programs, let's take a moment to consider the "abstinence-only" sex ed programs the current Administration pushes, as well as their reluctance or outright refusal to subsidize birth control or abortion. Say what you will about abortion, it leads to fewer "out-of-wedlock" children being born. Let's also consider how single mothers tend to be younger, less well-educated, and poorer than the population at large, and wonder about how the very poverty-alleviation problems Romney derides could help their children (who after all didn't ask to be born into a poor single-parent household) acquire the education and opportunities that are crucial to "the" American culture he's so proud of.

The development of a child is enhanced by having a mother and father. Such a family is the ideal for the future of the child and for the strength of a nation. I wonder how it is that unelected judges, like some in my state of Massachusetts, are so unaware of this reality, so oblivious to the millennia of recorded history. It is time for the people of America to fortify marriage through constitutional amendment, so that liberal judges cannot continue to attack it!

Setting aside the unsupported assertion that having a mother and father is "the ideal" - it's not the "liberal judges" who attack it. Assuming that there's an attack on marriage at all, it's coming from either legislatures - elected by the people - that draft laws about marriage, or individual plaintiffs who think those laws are wrong/bad/dumb. The judges, liberal or otherwise, aren't leading the charge to make marriage illegal or whatever it is Romney thinks they're up to.

Europe is facing a demographic disaster. That is the inevitable product of weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for the sanctity of
human life and eroded morality. Some reason that culture is merely an accessory
to America’s vitality; we know that it is the source of our strength. And we are
not dissuaded by the snickers and knowing glances when we stand up for family
values, and morality, and culture. We will always be honored to stand on
principle and to stand for principle.

To the extent that Europe is facing a "demographic disaster" because the good Christian people aren't having enough babies and the scary Muslims are breeding like rabbits - well, the Muslims have faith in the Creator, love their families, respect the sanctity of human life, and by their lights are extremely moral. What's the problem?

I don't think anyone really objects to the notion that our shared identity as Americans is a source of strength. What those of us providing the snickers and knowing glances object to is your definition of that identity, which seems cramped and exclusionary. I'd also like to point out that, while principles are fine things to have, they only get you so far. Abstract moral rules are a good guide to proper behavior, but in life as it's lived we have to accept the fact that it's not always clear how they apply.

The attack on our culture is not our sole challenge. We face economic competition unlike anything we have ever known before. China and Asia are emerging from centuries of poverty. Their people are plentiful, innovative, and ambitious.

Both China and Asia.

And there are so. damn. many. of them!

If we do not change course, Asia or China will pass us by as the economic superpower, just as we passed England and France during the last century. The prosperity and security of our children and grandchildren depend on us.

Asia or China. I'm anticipating an economic throwdown sometime in the 2040s between China and Asia for economic supremacy. I note, again, that according to Romney we need to "change course" to keep our economic edge on those inscrutable Chinese. Yet his party has been in charge of the government's economic toolbox for nearly eight years. If they think a change in course is needed, they can do it right now.

Our prosperity and security also depend on finally acting to become energy secure. Oil producing states like Russia and Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Iran are siphoning over $400 billion per year from our economy—that’s almost what we spend annually for defense. It is past time for us to invest in energy technology, nuclear power, clean coal, liquid coal, renewable sources and energy efficiency. America must never be held hostage by the likes of Putin, Chavez, and Ahmendinejad.

"Siphoning" is an interesting way to put it. You'd almost think we weren't paying them for goods and services they willingly provide. You'd also almost think that the dirty libs weren't encouraging the development of alternative energy sources for the last 20 or 30 years precisely because they could see this coming after the energy crisis of the '70s. So, when Romney has a good point, he's taking it from the good old liberal agenda. I won't tell Ann Coulter if you don't!

And our economy is also burdened by the inexorable ramping of government
spending. Don’t focus on the pork alone—even though it is indeed irritating and
shameful. Look at the entitlements. `They make up 60% of federal spending today.
By the end of the next President’s second term, they will total 70%. Any conservative plan for the future has to include entitlement reform that solves
the problem, not just acknowledges it.

I agree, Mitt. We should raise taxes a bit to pay for what we spend. Problem solved!

Most politicians don’t seem to understand the connection between our ability to compete and our national wealth, and the wealth of our families. They act as if money just happens–that it’s just there. But every dollar represents a good or
service produced in the private sector. Depress the private sector and you
depress the well-being of Americans.

I have to admit I don't really understand what he's talking about here. We're all better off when the economy is doing well? I think?

That’s exactly what happens with high taxes, over-regulation, tort windfalls, mandates, and overfed, over-spending government. Did you see that today,
government workers make more money than people who work in the private sector.
Can you imagine what happens to an economy where the best opportunities are for
bureaucrats?

It's totally true, too. I work for the government and I wipe my ass with hundred-dollar bills. I call up Bill Gates all the time just to brag about how much more money I make than he does.

Just because it's been all over the news for at least a year, I'll call your attention to the fact that the subprime mortgage mess and the sale of these high-risk mortgages to third parties was aided and abetted by a lack of adequate regulations. I'll also point out that, by the standards of other first-world countries, we have incredibly low taxes.

It’s high time to lower taxes, including corporate taxes, to take a weed-whacker to government regulations, to reform entitlements, and to stand up to the increasingly voracious appetite of the unions in our government!

As I said, our taxes are already wicked low. Government regulations exist in almost every case because, in the absence of regulations, someone did something that caused a lot of harm, and we can see in the subprime-mortgage market an excellent example of how regulations come to be needed. As a member of a government union, I can assert that at least my own union is not so much "voracious" as "content with what it has." It's hard to stand up to someone who isn't asking you to do anything you're not already doing.

And finally, let’s consider the greatest challenge facing America—and facing the entire civilized world: the threat of violent, radical Jihad.

Whoa. Wait, dude. You just said the "most fundamental challenge" was the attack on "the" American culture. I'd think "most fundamental" would also be "greatest" in this context.

In one wing of the world of Islam, there is a conviction that all governments should be destroyed and replaced by a religious caliphate. These Jihadists will battle any form of democracy—to them, democracy is blasphemous for it says that citizens, not God shape the law.

From Mike Huckabee, Republican:

"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I
believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change
the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the
Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's
standards," Huckabee said.

Just sayin'.

They find the idea of human equality to be offensive. They hate everything we believe about freedom just as we hate everything they believe about radical Jihad.

Pretty broad statement. I'm pretty sure I don't know everything "they" believe about "radical Jihad," and I'm not even sure I know everything "we" believe about freedom. I'm almost certain that the things I personally believe about freedom are different from what, say, John Yoo or George W. Bush believe.

To battle this threat, we have sent the most courageous and brave soldiers in the world. But their numbers have been depleted by the Clinton years when troops were reduced by 500,000, when 80 ships were retired from the Navy, and when our human intelligence was slashed by 25%. We were told that we were getting a peace dividend. We got the dividend, but we didn’t get the peace.

I thought we were the best ally peace has ever known!

While we're on the subject, Republican Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld advocated making the military even smaller. And, during the Clinton years, we did get the peace. We would be at peace right now if we hadn't invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Choosing to go to war with (according to Romney here) an inadequate military doesn't seem like the kind of thing that can be properly laid at Clinton's feet. To the extent that the Surge has been successful at reducing violence in Iraq, it appears that the size or quality of our military isn't the problem so much as the use to which it's been put. And, if the size of the military is insufficient, the President (a Republican, by the way) has various tools at his disposal to increase its size. That he's chosen not to do this over the past seven years is something Romney might want to bring up with him.

That's if you even accept the premise that fighting "radical Jihad" is properly a military issue. Diplomacy with other threatened governments, law enforcement, and the targeted use of Special Forces troops all seem like they might be more effective at combating enemies who aren't states than invading states that aren't attacking us.

In the face of evil in radical Jihad and given the inevitable military ambitions of China, we must act to rebuild our military might. Raise military spending to 4% of our GDP, purchase the most modern armament, re-shape our fighting forces for the asymmetric demands we now face, and give the veterans the care they
deserve!

China's military spending is a very small fraction of ours. We almost spend more than the rest of the world combined. The problem is not the size or quality of our military, and having a bigger, badder military is not going to do anything to address the rise of "radical Jihad." Giving the veterans the care they deserve is a great idea, which I strongly encourage Governor Romney to raise with the man who can get it done - Republican President George W. Bush. We don't need to change Administrations to fix that problem.

Soon, the face of liberalism in America will have a new name. Whether it is Barack or Hillary, the result would be the same if they were to win the Presidency.

Arguably true. There's not a lot of difference, policywise.

The opponents of American culture would push the throttle, devising new
justifications for judges to depart from the constitution. Economic neophytes
would layer heavier and heavier burdens on employers and families, slowing our
economy and opening the way for foreign competition to further erode our lead.

Judges can't, by definition, depart from the Constitution. You may not like the way a particular judge reads or interprets the Constitution, but they're not "departing" from it. And I don't think you want to get into an argument about who's the bigger economic neophyte while you're conceding the Republican nomination to a man who publicly admits he has little knowledge of, or interest in, the economy.

Even though we face an uphill fight, I know that many in this room are fully behind my campaign.” You are with me all the way to the convention. Fight on,
just like Ronald Reagan did in 1976. But there is an important difference from 1976: today… we are a nation at war. And Barack and Hillary have made their intentions clear regarding Iraq and the war on terror. They would retreat and declare defeat.

I don't recall either of them saying that. Eventually remove (most of) the troops from Iraq, yes; but the goal was to have an independent, democratic Iraq. The withdrawal going to have to happen sooner or later. It's also the strategy most Americans prefer; I'll be charitable and assume you didn't mean to tell the majority of Americans that they favor "retreat and defeat."

And the consequence of that would be devastating. It would mean attacks on America, launched from safe havens that make Afghanistan under the Taliban look
like child’s play. About this, I have no doubt.

You should share your secret information sources with the Administration, so they can take out these safe havens. Unless you're just speculating wildly to freak people out.

I disagree with Senator McCain on a number of issues, as you know. But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and on eliminating Al Qaeda and terror.

Really? "Whatever it takes"? What if it takes a draft, or rationing oil and gasoline? What if it costs so much money that taxes need to be raised? What if it takes negotiating with other interested parties, like the Iranian government? I can't imagine anyone seriously disagrees with the goals of capturing bin Laden and destroying Al Qaeda; the question is how you think any candidate from your party will be able to do it when seven years of Republican leadership haven't been able to.

If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.

Don't hurt yourself patting youself on the back there, buddy. Setting aside the baseless slander of Clinton and Obama (and, practically speaking: is that even logically possible? To whom would they "surrender"?), how is your presence or absence from the race at this point even a consideration? McCain was already in the driver's seat; presumably he'd be making the same case for his policy vis-a-vis the Clinton or Obama policies regardless of whether you stay or go.

This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters… many of you right here in this room… have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming President. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country.

If only America loved you back, Governor.

I will continue to stand for conservative principles; I will fight alongside you for all the things we believe in. And one of those things is that we cannot allow the next President of the United States to retreat in the face evil extremism!!

I like how the transcript uses the double exclamation points. If only they'd included an appropriate lolcat.

It is the common task of each generation—and the burden of liberty—to preserve this country, expand its freedoms ...

Pardon me while I pause for laughter at the recent Republican "expansion" of our freedoms.

... and renew its spirit so that its noble past is prologue to its glorious future.
To this task… accepting this burden… we are all dedicated, and I firmly believe, by the providence of the Almighty, that we will succeed beyond our fondest hope. America must remain, as it has always been, the hope of the earth.

Thank you, and God bless America.

"It has always been, the hope of the earth"? Really? I love my country, but ... wow. Maybe if we didn't have such a grandiose notion of our nation's role in the world, we wouldn't find ourselves embroiled in the kinds of messes the next President is going to have to deal with.

Smell you later, Mittens. Don't call us; we'll call you.

Super Tuesday

It’s Super Tuesday; if you can vote, I encourage you to do so.

If you’re voting in the Democratic primary, I’d also like to encourage you to vote for Barack Obama, but before I get into exactly why I think he deserves your vote, I’d like to say a word or two about the remarkably ineffective way supporters of Obama and Clinton alike have been going about persuading people to vote for their candidate.

I start with this piece, which I came to on Matt Yglesias’ blog at the Atlantic. He says it “does a great job … of highlighting both the arguments and the underlying dynamics in play.” I disagree; I think it does a great job of highlighting bad arguments for just about anything. In the piece, Son tries to convince Mother to vote for Obama because, essentially, she’s only voting for Clinton because she’s a middle-aged white woman who identifies with Clinton. Mother responds that Son is only voting for Obama because of illogical and emotionally grounded assumptions about Clinton (and, in the end, Mother). The piece does touch on some of the experience-related issues that the campaigns have been using to distinguish themselves from each other, but the main argument consists of Mother and Son telling the other that he or she is behaving irrationally.

This is something that, if you’re reading this now, you’ve probably seen a lot of over the past month or so. It’s not just on the Web, either; it shows up in op-ed pieces in prestigious papers and on the talking-head shows on the teevee. It’s not effective; the only people persuaded by the argument that supporting Kang is logical and supporting Kodos is irrational already support Kang. The people who support Kodos are only confirmed in their belief that supporting Kang is totally ridiculous. Kang supporters “just don’t get it” and can be dismissed as dumb or irrational partisans.

This mirrors the debate style used to deepen the conservative/liberal divide in the country, a phenomenon that’s been aided and abetted by Karl Rove-style politics over the last seven years. You can see, I hope, how counterproductive it really is. Telling someone that their opinion is dumb or irrational and if they really knew what they were doing they’d do things your way is most likely to get them to tell you to go piss up a rope. And that’s true even if it’s true that the Other Dude is actually being totally irrational and/or stupid by voting for Kodos. He’s got to figure that out himself. He’s not going to engage in a thorough self-examination about his real motives and his real interests because someone tells him he’s an idiot.

He might, though, be persuaded by someone making a convincing, reasonable case for the candidate that doesn’t insult people who take the opposite view. That’s obviously more difficult and time-consuming than coming up with clever putdowns, which is probably a lot of the reason why you don’t see it done much in comments on blogs. It’s much more effective at making a case for the candidate, though.

In this case, the candidate I’d like to make a case for is Barack Obama. This year’s Democratic contenders do not have extreme policy differences, for the most part. Their policy goals are similar or identical in most respects. Where they do have differences – whether a universal health care plan should include a mandate, whether it’s a Good Idea to talk with the leaders of countries we’ve shunned over the past seven years, whether we should issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, whether we should set a timetable for removing troops from Iraq – it’s very hard to say who has the better argument, and they are really questions of means, not ends.

That doesn’t mean the discussions about those issues aren’t worth having, just that there aren’t clear-cut policy differences from which it’s possible to make a call for Obama or Clinton. If you disagree – if you think that a mandate for insurance coverage is absolutely essential, for example – then probably you’ve already made your choice. Even if you think that Clinton’s position on these issues is better, though, I think it’s worth wondering whether she’ll be able to deliver on those policy promises. I think the decision about which candidate to vote for in this year’s Democratic primaries comes down to questions about which candidate is most likely to be elected, and which one, if elected, could deliver on the issues that Democratic voters care about. The answer to those questions is, in my opinion, clearly Obama.

Clinton’s strongest arguments for her candidacy come down to experience. She means a couple of different things by that, and it’s worthwhile unpacking her argument a bit.

First, she says she’ll be “ready on Day One” because she was First Lady when Bill Clinton was President and therefore she understands both how to run the government and how to deal with the kinds of issues that a President has to address more or less daily. To the extent that this is true, it’s definitely a point in her favor. Bill Clinton’s first year as President was rocky, in part precisely because he had to learn on the job, and it would be good to avoid that kind of thing in 2009.

The questions, though, are how much of that experience Hillary Clinton actually has, and whether anything really prepares you to be President. She has not been forthcoming about what her role was in her husband’s Administration. She took charge of the attempt to provide universal health care in 1993 and 1994, and it was a spectacular fiasco. Maybe she learned from that. We don’t really know, because for the remainder of her husband’s term she largely kept out of the spotlight. Did she have some input in policy decisions? Almost certainly. But what was that influence? How did it affect what Bill Clinton accomplished in office? We don’t really know, and they’ve been reluctant to tell us. So while it’s probably true that she understands the problems a President faces better than any of the other candidates, we don’t know how significant that understanding is.

It’s an open question, for me at least, whether any experience is relevant to being President. Either candidate would be surrounded by people with years of experience in government, so it’s unclear exactly how much the new President’s personal experience matters on a day-to-day basis. As a matter of big-picture policy background, the Democratic primary featured several candidates with far more experience in government than either Obama or Clinton, and none of them attracted significant support. In 2000, Al Gore had eight years of Vice-Presidential experience under his belt, and lost a tight race to a man whose only experience in government was as Governor of Texas – a state whose Governor is not unduly burdened with duties and whose legislature only meets every other year. Nonetheless, George W. Bush’s first nine months in office went by fairly smoothly. It’s worth noting, too, that the architects of many of W.’s least successful policies – Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz – all had decades of experience in government – including, in some cases, having argued convincingly against precisely the policies they later advocated. Experience is something, sure, but it’s awfully hard to say exactly what it is, or how much weight it should be given.

Clinton’s experience also includes eight years in the Senate. That’s something, too, arguably more important than her eight years as the wife of the President. Obama has four years in the Senate, though; is an extra four years in the Senate a significant edge? I’m not convinced. Clinton, after all, voted as a Senator in favor of giving Bush the authority to go to war, and she’s never said that vote was a mistake. She’s apparently done a good job for the people of New York, and it’s true that she’s been able to work with Republican Senators to get legislation passed. Obama has also been an effective legislator, working well on specific issues with Republican colleagues. It’s not clear that Clinton’s legislative experience gives her an edge over Obama, either as a demonstration of effective leadership or of good judgment.

Of course, the other thing Clinton means by her experience is that of being the target of 16 years of conservative vitriol. “I’m still here,” she says, and it’s true. She is. What she doesn’t say, perhaps because it’s obvious, is that so are they. She alludes frequently to her experience fighting conservative smears and claims that that experience makes her better able to fight for Democratic policies as President. She also claims that, although Obama hasn’t yet had the same level of venom directed at him, if elected, he will. The inference is that either candidate will have to deal with the same kind of attacks, and that she’s uniquely qualified to respond to them.

This may be true, but I think it’s fair to wonder about how effective she’s really been at responding to the attacks. After 16 years, conservatives still loathe her. She hasn’t defanged their attacks so much as endured them. It speaks well of her that she’s had the courage to continue her political career under what I think we can all concede have been pretty much relentless attacks. But the fact remains that even if we grant her unique experience dealing with Republican attacks, she also attracts them. She unifies conservatives in a way no other figure – not even her husband – is able to do. The attacks she endures aren’t simply because she’s a prominent Democrat (there are plenty of others, none of whom have inspired conservative anger on the same scale) or that she’s a liberal (which, depending on the issue, she’s not at all). It’s personal.

That means that, although Obama will surely have a tough road ahead of him as the nominee, it almost by definition cannot be as bad as what she has gone through and will go through as the nominee. He's got 16 years of catching up to do on that score. It’s certainly possible that dirt could be dug up against Obama, but so far the worst we know about is a somewhat shady deal to buy part of a vacant lot and Obama’s own admission that as a younger man he did some blow. It’s small potatoes compared to the Whitewater investigation that sprawled across both of Bill Clinton’s terms in office, or McCain’s involvement in the late-80s savings-and-loan scandals.

There is another side to Clinton’s experience that she doesn’t bring up, and of which she may be unaware. Judging by her own comments and her husband’s, they have survived increasingly vicious, hostile political environments. Those circumstances forced them to become defensive, suspicious, and secretive. The recent New Yorker profile of Hillary suggested that she has not simply shrugged off the years of political warfare that she was exposed to in Arkansas and Washington. She’s been changed by them. Probably that was inevitable, and unfortunate. I do think it’s reasonable to wonder whether we want or need another President after the current one whose political instincts are toward secrecy and paranoia. It’s true that just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean people aren’t really out to get you; while the “vast right-wing conspiracy” may not have been as vast as the Clintons think, it was and is real enough. I just don’t know that we’re best served by a President whose political instincts have been shaped by fighting it.


Nonetheless, even if Clinton isn’t the obviously better candidate on policy grounds, and doesn’t have a clear edge in experience, and has some unfortunate if understandable political habits, she might still be the better candidate on electability grounds. If Clinton was able to unite the Democratic party behind her agenda and attract widespread support, she would be the more convincing candidate, particularly if she could help get more Democratic Congressmen and Senators elected. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Partly as a result of her long exposure to the nation, there are relatively few people who don’t already like and admire her to whom she can appeal. Republicans, particularly conservatives, despise her. There will be very few “Clinton Republicans” if she is the nominee, and she does not significantly expand the reach of the party. At best, I think an election with Hillary as the candidate will have record turnout for both parties, but I don’t think such an election will attract many new or undecided voters. She might pull out a win – the last two Presidential elections have been very, very close and McCain is a flawed candidate himself. I don’t think she’s likely to increase the Democratic majority in Congress by much, and if elected I think she’ll have a hard time persuading Republicans to get her agenda passed.

In contrast, consider Obama. His policy positions are very close to hers. He can’t claim to have spend eight years living with the President, it’s true, but his legislative accomplishments, both in Illinois and in Washington, demonstrate that he can be effective in getting legislation passed with votes from Republicans. Many Democrats I know feel queasy about “bipartisanship” – particularly with the example the Congress has set over the past year. If I thought Obama’s rhetoric about inclusion and working with Republicans meant that kind of “bipartisanship” – that is, passing the Republican agenda with the briefest resistance – I would share those doubts. What his record demonstrates is an ability to find common ground with particular Republicans on specific issues, and that’s a skill any Democratic President will need to get any legislation passed. Because of the reaction she inspires in the conservative base of the Republican party, I think it’s doubtful that Hillary Clinton will be able to do that.

Obama has demonstrated in every state in which he’s campaigned so far an unusual (as far as I know, unprecedented) ability to get younger voters and independents to the polls. He expands the pool of votes available to the Democrats if he’s the nominee. That’s nice for him, but it will probably be even better for other Democrats on the ticket with him. In close races for open seats – of which there are an unusual number this year – the extra votes could determine whether the seat goes to a Democrat or a Republican. Even a few extra seats in the House or the Senate would make it much easier for President Obama to get his agenda passed. Since the two candidates are largely in accord on their policies, I think Obama is more likely to get Clinton’s agenda passed than Clinton is.

I don’t think Obama will be able to transcend partisan politics the way some of his more enthusiastic admirers do, and I’m not convinced that, if elected, he will be transformative in the way FDR and Reagan were. I just think he presents the best possible chance for the nation to have a better, more effective government with a sober foreign policy. If you’re voting in the Democratic primaries today, I hope you’ll give him your vote.

The Trouble With Rudy: The Final Chapter

Apparently the biggest problem with Rudy is not being able to get enough people to vote for him.

So long, Mr. 9-11. Here's to a long, happy, and most importantly complete retirement for you. If you can take some of your foreign policy advisors along, that'd be swell.

The Trouble With Rudy: Part the Third

I don't know how I missed this when it came out, but in case you were thinking "Yeah, Rudy, kind of a nut on the foreign-policy side of things, but I bet his fiscal policies are pretty good" - well, not so much:

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said Friday that the
alternative minimum tax — which is expected to generate as much as $1 trillion
over the next 10 years — could be eliminated over the long term by balancing it
out with even more tax cuts.

...

The alternative minimum tax, or AMT, was enacted in 1969 to ensure that
a handful of wealthy taxpayers could not exploit a series of loopholes to avoid
paying any income taxes. But the tax was never indexed for inflation. It
now applies to more than 4 million taxpayers and has been the target of tax
reformers who say it will soon unfairly target middle-class taxpayers, if it
hasn't already.

But eliminating the AMT would be extremely expensive, costing $100 billion
in 2010 alone. Giuliani told the 700-member audience of the Northern Virginia
Technology Council that he wants to cap the tax, and perhaps eventually
eliminate it altogether.

"Over time we can figure out how to eliminate it. ... If we were going to
eliminate it, though, we'd have to balance it with additional tax
cuts," Giuliani said, leaving confused expressions on his audience.
"That might be by making the Bush tax cuts permanent."

Emphasis added.

This is an extreme version of what's become a seemingly universal belief among conservatives that cutting taxes usually, or always, results in greater tax revenues. Exactly how this became the pet economic theory of Republican Presidential candidates is the subject of a recently-published book, but the basic theory is something like this:

Tax revenues don't automatically increase as tax rates increase, because at some point the tax rates become so high that people either leave the country or find more ways to hide their income from the tax man. At some point, it becomes counterproductive to raise taxes, and in theory, at very high rates, a tax cut could actually increase tax revenues. That's not crazy. The principle behind the Laffer curve isn't completely nuts.

What is crazy is the way a surprising number of people use it. The biggest problem with the Laffer curve is that nobody really knows where that point is, and the second biggest problem is that they frequently assume that, no matter how much taxes are cut, we're still on the wrong side of it. Income tax rates for the highest income brackets have declined steadily from a high of (IIRC) 91% under that pinko Eisenhower. Today they're roughly 35%, less for lower tax brackets. For the U.S. to be on the wrong side of the Laffer curve (so much so that tax cuts would increase tax revenues significantly), we would have to think that the optimal tax rate is well south of that.

Giuliani's big idea - which he later confirmed was not a misstatement - is that (1) we should cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans and (2) if that reduces government revenue, we can pay for that by cutting other taxes even more. It does not seem to occur to him that if the government loses revenue by (1), it is past the point on the Laffer curve where (2) even kind-of makes sense. Not to mention that, if we're on the side of the curve where raising taxes raises tax revenue, doing either one is objectively nuts without also significantly cutting government spending. Since his foreign-policy positions envision a robust use of the U.S. military, explicitly contemplating a war with Iran, we are left to conclude that he will be cutting domestic spending sharply even as most of the country favors some form of universal health care.

Michael Medved Should Stick To Movie Reviews, Too.

I have vague memories, as a kid, of reading The Golden Turkey Awards and the Hollywood Hall of Shame. Making fun of bad movies is entertaining stuff, and reading people make fun of bad movies is almost as good, especially if you are, as I was, a smartass 14-year-old. Those two worthy tomes were the work of Harry and Michael Medved, the latter of whom was at the time a pretty well-known film critic. Sometimes I'd catch him on "At The Movies," which if I remember right had as co-host Rex Reed. Which must have been pretty weird on the set, given the kind of homophobic projection Medved displays here:

The ignominious fall of Senator Larry Craig casts new light on the importance of the nation’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy banning open homosexuals from military service.

It ... does?

If preventing public sex in airport men’s rooms is important enough to
justify the deployment of undercover cops, isn’t it similarly significant to
avoid, at all costs, sexual encounters in military latrines?

Not sure about this "at all costs" business. Using undercover cops seems like a pretty low-cost solution to the airport-men's-room problem, really, although you could certainly argue that there are more important things for the airport police to be doing. Likewise, I hear the military has "Military Police" - perhaps they could look into this problem at little additional cost.

Imagine the impact on morale and unit cohesion if two guys from the same barracks engaged in toe-tapping hanky-panky (and perhaps much more) while occupying adjacent bathroom stalls in the military facilities?

Yeah, good thing that's never happened. Also, what if two guys from entirely different barracks did it? It'd be like the Sharks and the Jets, only with M16s and hand grenades.

Of course, advocates for gays in the military will insist that any such indulgence would involve a violation of the rules, with offenders facing stiff, severe consequences. But the impact of gay GI’s on bathroom atmospherics doesn’t just stem from the real chance of actual sex acts in the latrine, it involves whole sexualization of one of the most frequented and important conveniences on any base.

"Stiff" consequences? "Whole sexualization"? What are you trying to say, Mike?

Also, "bathroom atomspherics"? Your objection is aesthetic? I would have gone with "Sex in public is bad, mmmkay?" but ... let's see where you're taking this.

If openly gay males do nothing to compromise restroom integrity and security, why not invite female soldiers into men’s bathrooms, or open the door of women’s facilities to males? Surely, the same rules that would, theoretically, prevent gay men from hassling other men in the head would prevent hetero males from harassing women (or vice verse). Just as a gay male in the military would receive punishment for bathroom misbehavior, so to a straight guy could be busted for making improper overtures to women in the ladies room – but that wouldn’t make him any more welcome in a female facility.

There are a lot of responses to this, but the first one that springs to mind is that there are already gay soldiers using the same latrine as their straight brothers-in-arms. Thus far, I've not heard of any cases where gay soldiers hanging out in the barracks toilet raped someone. There are, however, lots of reports of female soldiers being raped when they use the latrine at night. Which suggests that being gay isn't the same thing as being a woman, which Medved apparently needs to have pointed out. He also needs to have it pointed out that Craig and men like him don't identify as gay; letting openly gay guys serve in the military has no bearing on whether repressed closet cases serve, now or tomorrow.

I've said this before, and I'll probably have to say it again, but fear of punishment is not the only or most important factor in keeping people in line. It's socialization. The social structure of the military isn't going to be conducive to gay cruising anytime soon, and if it were - well, again. They're called "Military Police."

The problem isn’t just the chance of molestation, it’s the radical change of mood and sensibility if you know you may be checked out as a sex object at a very private moment (of urination or defecation) when most normal people prefer to avoid any and all thoughts of physical intimacy. A bathroom becomes a vastly more uncomfortable and even menacing place if it’s used for sexual encounters, whether those connections involve gay or straight sexuality.

I'll defer to his apparently greater experience in this area, but I think it's appropriate to note that women get "checked out as a sex object" all the time. He doesn't seem to understand how, if the bathroom is uncomfortable and menacing if it's used for either gay or straight sex, his point about how "teh gayz r destroye amerika!" is invalidated. It's the "sex in public," not the "gay," that's the problem.

In a column in Sunday’s New York Times, Laura MacDonald insists that toilet sex never involves one-sided, unwanted attentions. According to the research she cites (based on “a groundbreaking dissertation” of a doctoral candidate at Washington University nearly 30 years ago) “a straight man would be left alone after that first tap or cough or look went unanswered. The initiator does not want to be beaten up or arrested or chased by teenagers, so he engages in safeguards to ensure that any physical advance will be reciprocated.”

Certainly in the case of Larry Craig, the arresting officer did nothing to discourage the Senator’s attentions until the very moment of the arrest and almost certainly invited his advances. The near unanimous revulsion regarding the incident (from Republican and Democrat, gay and straight alike) therefore has nothing to do with sexual assault or attempted rape, or any notion of the mild-mannered, bespectacled 62-year-old legislator somehow forcing himself on the burly, buff and much younger cop.

Since the cop was there undercover as part of a sting, discouraging Craig would have been pretty counterproductive. Also, the cop just sat on the toilet until Craig slipped his hand under the stall; at what earlier point does Medved think he should have said "Whoa, there. I'm not like that!" I submit (again) that at least the liberal disgust with the behavior has nothing to do with the sex per se, but with the "in public" part of the program.

Also, that last sentence is kind of hot. Maybe Medved can rework it into a film treatment.

The disgust for the three term Senate toe-tapper arises instead from the very association of men’s rooms and amorous meet-ups, of toilet stalls and sex acts. We have a common and compelling interest in keeping such places free of erotic tension and that’s why we dispatch police officers to patrol public rest stations—even though they’re hardly needed to prevent outright assaults.

I'm not sure we have a "compelling interest" in keeping anywhere "free of erotic tension." Free of public sex, maybe.

And if regular users of airport or public park facilities have a right to escape suggestive glances or inviting gestures that can poison an already fetid atmosphere, how much more so do young recruits (many of them eighteen or nineteen years old) the same right to avoid similar attentions (or even suspicions) from their fellow soldiers in the intimate quarters necessitated by military service? It’s no wonder that despite some fifteen years of relentless propaganda, most high ranking members of the armed services remain unconvinced that we should alter regulations to allow participation of open homosexuals.

I submit that no "right to escape suggestive glances" exists, and if it did you could probably arrest half the country every Friday night. It's not clear why the age of the soldiers is relevant - presumably all the hot gay sex Medved is worried about would be just as rampant among the older soldiers. Maybe the younger guys are also "burly and buff," like the cop. And although it's true that "most high ranking members of the armed services" are opposed to openly gay servicemen, it's mostly a generational thing. Those guys are in their 40s, 50s and 60s. They grew up in a much more homophobic society, and they were socialized to that standard. Younger soldiers, surveys show, don't much care. Most younger Americans don't much care; they've been socialized in a culture that's been partially shaped by that "fifteen years of relentless propaganda" Medved refers to.

The national shudder of discomfort and queasiness associated with any introduction of homosexual eroticism into public men’s rooms should make us more determined than ever to resist the injection of those lurid attitudes into the even more explosive situation of the U.S. military.

Again, Mike, it's not the homosexuality. It's the "public" part of "public men's room."

Medved was a sometimes funny and insightful movie reviewer. It's a shame he doesn't demonstrate the same gifts as a political and cultural commentator. Perhaps he should go back to the gig he's good at.

Torture's Bad, Mmmmkay?

I had thought that most people were pretty much in agreement with the idea that torture was bad. Evil, even. That's why the revelations about what happened at Abu Ghraib got so much attention; why the three-year detention and abuse of Jose Padilla generated so much controversy; why the American Bar Association and American Psychological Association recently condemned the practice and the participation of any of their members in it. It appears, however, that I was mistaken. Professional blogger Megan McArdle yesterday posed what she seems to think is a very difficult question: why shouldn't we torture people?

One of the most facile dismissals of torture is that it doesn't work, so
why bother? That's tempting, but it's too easy.

To be fair, she's not actually advocating torture. So she's got that going for her. However, we should note that, from the beginning, she gets things backwards. The argument that torture is ineffective only arises if you happen to be discussing torture with someone who already thinks it's morally acceptable. The theoretical argument is logically prior to the practical argument.

Torture seems to me very likely to work provided that you can verify the
information, which I assume interrogators can in at least some circumstances.

If the information can be verified, what's the point of the torture? The usual justification for the use of torture is that the information that the torture is intended to reveal can't be obtained any other way. This, at least, has been Alan Dershowitz's argument, and he remains the most prominent advocate of legalizing torture in the United States.

Nor is it obvious to me that the quality of information is likely to be
lower than that obtained by other means: yes, people will say anything to avoid
torture, but they'll also say anything to avoid imprisonment. Maybe the lies
will be vivider or more voluble under torture, but it doesn't seem necessarily
so that the ratio of lies to truth will increase.

I admit that I'm not entirely sure that I follow McArdle's thought here. It seems to be that torture is no less reliable than other ways of getting information from someone (interrogation, for example, seems to work reasonably well for the police). But that's not really to the point; what she ought to be arguing is that information that is obtained through the use of torture is more reliable, and the enhanced reliability justifies the extreme measures. I don't know what evidence she could use to support the argument, but what she's actually saying here doesn't help her out at all.

I'd rather see people take the hard stance and say "Yeah, torture may still
work, but we still shouldn't use it because it's wrong."

Well, OK. Torture may work, but we still shouldn't use it because it's wrong.

I note here that she herself is unwilling to "take the hard stance" - she just wants "people" to do it. Why she's unwilling to make the incredibly bold statement that torture is wrong remains unclear.

Otherwise, you're kind of stuck if someone comes up with a way to make it
effective. I've been thinking about this in relation to the much vaunted lie detecting brain scans.

Huh. I've been thinking about this in relation to our own government's documented abuse of "enemy combatants" (and, indeed, its own citizens) but I guess freaky mind-reading devices are also a threat. Judging by the Wired article she cites, the "lie detecting brain scans" would be an alternative to torture rather than an accessory for it, which makes her concern here speculative at best.

Most people have talked about the implications for the criminal justice
system--does the fifth amendment still apply? But what I wonder is, what does
this mean for torturers?

Weird that she's concerned not with the potential invasion of the civil liberties of innocent people posed by lie-detecting machines, but with how said apparatus will affect people who are engaged in criminal activity.

If you can actually tell accurately when someone is lying, torture suddenly
becomes very, very effective, doesn't it?

Or, you know, unnecessary, because presumably you'd know if they were lying even without torture. I think she wants to say that this lie-detection stuff will justify using more extreme measures to induce people to tell the truth, but she's not saying it and I'm not sure how she'd get there.

And yet, it would still be wrong. So make the case on those grounds.
Efficiency is a dangerous red herring.

As a consequence of starting from the wrong end of the argument against torture, she ends where she should have begun. She throws out a challenge to her reader to make the case that she's either unwilling or unable to make: that torture is wrong. Her entire post comes down to: "Torture's wrong because it doesn't work, but what if it did? Would it still be wrong?"

And this woman is paid well by the Atlantic Monthly for this.

But it's not just her filling the tubes with this lazy, poorly thought out stuff. Her Atlantic colleague Matt Yglesias responds thusly:

For some sense of "necessarily" this may be true, but this flies in the face of
historical practice. It seems unlikely to me that torture's most famous
systematic applications almost all come in the context of regimes specifically
looking to generate spurious confessions. Stalin's Russia, North Vietnamese POW
camps, the Spanish Inquisition, it's always the same story. It's not the case,
however, that torture "doesn't work" -- Nikolai Bukharin and others confesses to all
sorts of preposterous crimes exactly as Stalin wanted them to. The question
is whether routinized torture of al-Qaeda suspects is a useful method of
advancing any public purpose.

Yglesias gets a point for noticing that most torturers are less interested in the truth of the confessions they get than the fact of the confession (I'm guessing the "unlikely" in the second sentence shouldn't be there). But then he loses it for missing the moral question McArdle attempted to bring up. The question isn't the utilitarian one of "whether routinized torture of al-Qaeda suspects is a useful method of advancing any public purpose." That's just the effectiveness argument in a different dress. The question is whether torture is morally acceptable at all.

Megan counterproses that "people take the hard stance and say 'Yeah, torture may
still work, but we still shouldn't use it because it's wrong.'" I think Megan
thinks that people from the "torture doesn't work" camp are arguing in bad
faith, but I'm really not.

Well, maybe he just doesn't read very carefully. For one thing, there's no reason I can't think both that torture is morally unacceptable and also ineffective as a practical matter, so there's no reason to suppose someone has to be in one "camp" or the other. Nor does McArdle imply that the argument that torture doesn't work is being made in bad faith; she's saying she finds it unconvincing because she can imagine a situation where it could work, and wonders what the objection to torture could be in that situation. (Hint: it's moral!)

I don't think it makes any sense at all to say that there's a categorical moral
against smashing people's fingers with a hammer or whatever other depraved acts
of torture you may care to imagine.

Oh. Well. I suppose I'm being nonsensical when I say that, morally speaking, Yglesias' opinion here is troglodytic.

After all, I believe (as most people believe) that it's sometimes morally
praiseworthy for the state to have its agents kill people with bullets, bombs,
mortar shells, etc. so there's surely some end such that torturing someone
would, if effective, be a just method of achieving that end.

I'm going to have to disagree with your police work here, Matt. War, and violence generally, is not the same thing as torture. Let's see if you can spot the difference:

The difference is that despite the horrors of war, there's a very strong
argument to be made that if good people systematically disavowed war-making as a
practice that bad guys would run roughshod over us. When Hitler's tanks start
rolling across Europe, someone's got to shoot back. By contrast, I don't see any
examples of societies using routinized legal torture to gain a decisive
advantage over their foes or any evidence that the current era of torture has
been a net positive in fighting al-Qaeda.

Ah. No, he can't. For Matt Yglesias, the only real argument against torturing people is that it hasn't been a "net positive." If it were, he'd presumably be first in line to work the rack and smash some fingers with sledgehammers. Or maybe he'd just leave the dirty business to other people and enjoy the "net positives."

To say that a method of investigation works "provided that you can verify the
information" is, after all, merely to beg the question. Consulting a psychic
works provided that you can verify the information, but spending person-hours
chasing down the psychic's "leads" isn't going to make the country safer.

Oooh, "person-hours." How very enlightened. Matt Yglesias, in favor of "net positive" torture, but not of hurting the tender sensibilities of people who might be offended by the term "man-hours." On the other hand, he did notice that "verifying the information" is a problem for McArdle's original post. So, kudos, I guess.

McArdle's not the type to take that kind of thing quietly, so she responded as follows:

I don't think that Matt &c are arguing from bad faith. Indeed, I agree with
them that torture in most cases isn't very effective. I don't agree with what we
might call the "strong case" against the efficacy of torture, which is that it
never works. If I have, say, a kidnapper from whom I want to get the location of
his victim, and I can credibly promise to shoot out his kneecap if the victim
isn't where he says she is, then I think I have a reasonable chance of finding
out where the victim is by torturing him. If he knows, it is clearly in his best
interest to tell me rather than a) playing dumb or b) giving me false
information.

Unless he really doesn't know or has some even more powerful motivation for not telling you. But, sure, it might work. So might other methods that don't involve shooting his kneecap off. Police use them all the time.

Now, those cases might be rare. Which is why many people, I assume Matt
included, make what we could call the "weak case" against torture, which is that
it generally isn't that effective. But I don't think that this is a very good
argument to deploy if your goal is, as mine is, a legal ban on torture by the US
government. The weak case doesn't prove we shouldn't use torture; it just proves
that we should limit it to cases, such as the above hypothetical, where there is
a reasonable likelihood that it will be effective. I doubt the rules for doing
so would be as complicated as, say, the New York City building code.

Which is basically Alan Dershowitz's argument for "torture warrants." Except the part about her goal being a legal ban on torture. I'm pretty sure Alan's not in favor of that. I'm not too sure about Matt, either.

The other problem with the weak case is that torture can theoretically be made
more effective. Those brain scans are real; a workable machine might be less
than a decade away. (It also might well not; the history of science journalism
is littered with the corpses of "next big things" that turned out not to,
y'know, actually work.)

I really wish she'd left the scary mind-reading devices out of this. I think even she realizes it doesn't do anything for her argument.

If you cannot make the case against legal torture without resorting to efficacy
arguments, what the hell do you do if it becomes pretty damn effective?

Well, exactly. What's your argument, Megan?

My position is that even if it is 100% effective--in the sense of producing only
true information--we should ban it. I don't trust anyone, not myself and
certainly not the state, with the power implied by sanctioned torture. I don't
want to live in a state that tortures people. And I don't think you need an
efficacy argument to make that case.

So, still kind of kicking it to someone else to do the work, then? I mean, I agree: we shouldn't torture people. I don't understand why McArdle is uncomfortable making a moral argument against it, though. And I really don't understand why the Atlantic is paying her good money to ask other people to make her arguments for her; surely they could find someone who's willing to take a position and support it. For example, here's one way:

First, to address Yglesias' idea that since he supports war in some circumstances, he must also support torture in some circumstances. Fighting is different from torture. If you're in a fight, you can fight back, or you can run away. You have options. Torture is a fundamentally different thing; the essence of torture is that the victim can't get away. The relation between the torturer and the victim of the torture is one of total dominance and total powerlessness. The point of torture is to break down the victim as thoroughly as possible until the torturer gets whatever it is he wants. Combat is different. A soldier may want to kill the enemy, but he runs the risk of being killed himself - neither side is utterly at the mercy of the other. It's possible to fight and die with dignity, but it's impossible - for either the torturer or the victim - to emerge from torture with human dignity intact. So, no, Matt - you can say that in some circumstances, it's right to fight and die without being forced to agree that sometimes, pulling out fingernails is OK.

Torture is immoral because the practice of torture is the most profound violation of a person that we can practice. Torture deprives its victims of any control over their persons. Indeed, whether it's inflicting physical or psychological damage to the victim, it's actively using the person's body and mind against him. Furthermore, assuming the victim survives, he bears the scars - mental and physical - for the rest of his life; in that sense, torture doesn't "end." If you think that there is a basic human right to control of your own mind and body, torture is immoral.

That is an argument against torture that has nothing to do with how useful it might be to the depraved people who would engage in its practice.

The Trouble With Rudy (Part 2)

I promise this is not going to turn into a rabid "Rudy Sucks!" blog.

At least, not exclusively.

But with Mr. Giuliani the Republican frontrunner, it seems prudent to me to take a closer look at what he says he'd do in office. This New Yorker profile doesn't exactly inpire confidence in his coolheaded decisionmaking skills, judgment, or plans for the future, I'm afraid. There's a lot of the same stuff that was in the Village Voice piece, but (as is the New Yorker's wont) it goes a bit further afield. For me, the most chilling parts are the quotes from Norman Podhoretz, who's been hired as Rudy's foreign policy advisor:

In any case, Podhoretz said to me, he believes that George W. Bush will
settle the matter himself, by bombing Iran before he leaves office. “I’m
probably the only person on the face of the earth who thinks that Bush will
order air strikes,” Podhoretz says. “But we’ll find out. If Bush doesn’t kick
the can down the road, then the issue becomes moot, obviously. But if he fails
to do what I think he will do, Rudy seems to me to be the best bet for doing
what is necessary.”

It seems to me that with the country currently fighting two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and with neither of them looking like they're going to be wrapped up soon, the absolute last thing we need to do is to start poking another hornet's nest. Setting aside, of course, the plain fact that Iran (a) doesn't currently have nuclear weapons and (b) if it did, it has no way of doing much of anything to us with them and (c) probably has no real desire to actually use them. Nor is it likely that Iran would use nukes against Israel, since Israel already has nukes and would surely retaliate in kind. So the fact that America's Mayor's senior foreign policy advisor both advocates bombing Iran and thinks Rudy's the guy who'll get that job done ought to give us all some pause.

Also, Rudy had this to say regarding the meaning of freedom just a few days ago:

We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or
50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the
oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our
background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people
can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority.
Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful
authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

[ Interruption by someone in the audience. ]

You have free speech so I can be heard.

Yes, he really said "Freedom is about authority." Rhetoric more evocative of 1984 is difficult to imagine.

The Trouble With Rudy (Part 1)

I lived in New York for two and a half years while Rudy Giuliani was mayor. I left the city well before The Evil Terrorist Attacks That Occurred On September Eleventh, and at the time I left I had the distinct impression that I'd probably seen the last of Rudy. Patrick Dorismond. "Giuliani Time." Amadou Diallo. The affairs (and, ultimately, the messy divorce, played out in public). The silly fight he picked with the Brooklyn Museum. By the summer of 2001, New York was mainly tired of the man.

But before New York was quite done with him, TETATOOSE gave him new political life. I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say that, had those attacks not ocurred, neither Giuliani nor G. W. Bush would still have political careers. In Giuliani's case, he became "America's Mayor" and he's got a realistic chance of being elected President next year, based almost entirely on his legend. The Onion piece describing Giuliani as running for "President of 9/11" was all too accurate; it's his alleged experience at dealing with terrorists that forms the core of his appeal.

Which is why this article in the Village Voice is so important. Wayne Barrett and Alexandra Kahan examine the claims Rudy has made about his TETATOOSE experience and qualifications, and finds them to be almost wholly without any substance. Unfortunately, because it's the Voice, a lot of people - even many liberals - are likely to either not read the piece at all or dismiss it out of hand. Which is a shame, because so far Rudy's campaign hasn't been able to show any real flaw in the research they've done. Rudy doesn't have much in the way of qualifications, and if his main appeal is basically bogus, I think it's doing us all a service to inform the voting public about it.

Harriet Miers Is A Bad Choice For The Supreme Court

Hey there, kids! Long time, no post, and all that!

Anyhow. I posted the substance of this somewhere else earlier today, where it got absolutely no play whatsoever. On the off chance that someone else might be interested in what an undermployed California lawyer thinks of the goings-on at the Supreme Court these days, I offer the following critique:

I think we all ought to have some serious reservations about this particular nominee. Obviously she's a competent attorney with decent political instincts, or she wouldn't have been elected president of those bar associations or held a seat on the Dallas city council. And it's not necessary, as her defenders remind us, to have been a judge before becoming a justice, nor is it necessary to have clerked at the Supreme Court or to have graduated from Harvard or Stanford or Yale to get a seat. Objections based on those "requirements" are specious. But those aren't the compelling objections to her appointment, which her defenders really do need to address.

First, and most serious, is the fact that she owes her national political career and her appointment to the Supreme Court from near-total obscurity solely to her personal friendship with George W. Bush. The last justice with that kind of relationship to a President was Abe Fortas, who was not confirmed as Chief Justice and eventually resigned in disgrace despite a distinguished legal career. Miers, assuming she were to be confirmed, would necessarily have to address cases where the executive branch is a litigant, or offers an amicus brief. How can we be sure of her impartiality when she has a close friendship with one of the parties to the case? It violates a fundamental principle of jurispridence for a friend of one of the parties to be the judge in his friend's case. If she recuses herself from those cases, as would be proper, she leaves the court with only eight justices on a significant number of cases each term. Whether she would, in fact, be impartial is irrelevant - the court cannot seem to have a stake in the outcome of a case. This objection has nothing to do with her legal qualifications and everything to do with her ability to be an effective justice.

Second, although she probably is a competent attorney, she does not have any significant experience in the practice of Constitutional law. Since virtually all the cases that come to the Supreme Court are Con Law cases, that's a serious failing. It's not that she's not smart, or went to a bad school; it's that she's largely been a corporate lawyer and has never addressed kind of law the Court deals in. The Supreme Court is a bad place for on-the-job training because its decisions have wide-ranging effects.

Third, she doesn't bring any other govermental experience to the job that it would be valuable for the Court to have. It's true that you don't need to be a judge to become a justice, but if a candidate doesn't have that background, it's perfectly legitimate to question what other relevant experience she does have that might be valuable. And the answer here is "very little." Aside from a brief stint on the Dallas city council, she's never served in an executive or legislative capacity. Nor has she run for election - I think that she was appointed to the city council position and declined to run for reelection (if I'm wrong, please let me know). Contrast that with someone like, well, Sandra Day O'Connor, who had to run for office, was elected, and served in the Arizona legislature with distinction - aside from her experience as a judge. So Miers lacks some special background that would excuse or compensate for her inexperience as a judge.

Fourth, but related to the second objection, we know nothing about her judicial philosophy. People who focus on her political or religious temperament are, IMO, focusing on the wrong thing. It's irrelevant to the question of her competence as a member of the Supreme Court what her political or religious opinions are. What is important is how she thinks she's going to do her job. What theories of Constitutional interpretation does she follow? Why? What authorities does she see as legitimate sources for understanding the text of the Constitution? What's her opinion of the use of legislative history in interpreting law? Does she prefer to work with other people to form a consensus before delivering an opinion, or does she decide to do what she thinks is right regardless of who agrees with her? Does she regard previous decisions of the Court as binding on today's Court? We don't know; she doesn't have any record of deciding cases, or arguing Con Law cases, that would tell us; and it's highly unlikely that we'll find anything of the kind out at the confirmation hearings.

Fifth, it's not merely a question of "Is she competent to handle the job?" Probably, she is. But there are only nine seats on the Supreme Court. We ought to be putting people on the Court who, like John Roberts, are more than merely competent; we should be trying to put our finest legal minds - whatever their politics - on the court. Harriet Miers may be a wonderful person and a skilled attorney, but she hasn't demonstrated in any way that she's one of the very finest legal minds our country has. Bush can do better.

Dare to be Stupid

My father-in-law has mentioned occasionally that he thinks the next big smoking-type battle in American health will be over obesity and the sale of basically unhealthy food to people. His point being that obesity is a huge health issue in the United States, and that as people become aware of the dangers, there will be increasing pressure put on politicians to Do Something about it.

New York appears to be among the first in the nation to move forward with this. Today, the New York Times reported that the city health department has urged city restaurants to stop selling food with trans fats. It's a strictly voluntary program for now, but the NYC's health commissioner likened trans fats to asbestos and lead. In a year the city will conduct another survey and decide what further steps, if any, need to be taken to curb the consumption of trans fats.

In other, apparently unrelated news, the NHTSA released a study about the effects of the repeal of the mandatory helmet law in Florida. To the surprise of probably nobody, the major result has been an increase in the fatalities and serious injuries suffered by motorcyclists in accidents. The relative frequency of accidents involving motorcycles has remained fairly constant with the population of motorcylcists; but the number of accidents where the rider was killed increased dramatically.

These two items both address a fundamental tension in a democratic society. By just about any standard, riding a motorcycle without a helmet is a foolish thing to do - even the best motorcyclist can get cut off or hit by a car weighing over a ton and moving at speed, to say nothing of trucks and SUVs. The helmet is, as the Florida data shows, a life-saving device. In the same way, we know that trans fats are bad for people who eat them in almost every way; they have almost no nutritive value and can lead to some seriously bad health problems.

Each case seems to present a straightforward case of bad or foolish behavior with little to recommend it. So it's understandable that, with the best of intentions, some people would try to ban them - mandatory helmet laws were once common, and the town of Tiburon in California has apparently banned the sale of trans fats in its restaurants. Except...

Well, people like to do it. People like riding bareheaded down the highway on their choppers. People like eating rich, trans-fat laden desserts. And although we know the behavior is wrong, do we have the right to prevent them from doing it? Put another way, does the community interest in keeping people alive and healthy outweigh the individual's right to enjoy himself even if the way he enjoys himself is unhealthy, dangerous, or borderline suicidal?

Here, in general, I think we have to say "No." At either extreme, of course, things are unpleasant: a society in which "Do as thou wilt" really is the whole of the law wouldn't be much of a society in any meaningful way; and a society so protective of its members' well-being as to regulate virtually all their behavior would be insufferable. But in between those extremes, a balance has to be struck. And generally speaking, we shouldn't be in the habit of regulating behavior that affects only the individual doing it.

It's true that obesity and its related illnesses cost us all fantastic sums as health care costs, and the same is true of the dead or incapacitated motorcyclists who would have survived had they been wearing helmets. But these I think are costs we need to bear as part of the price of living in a more-or-less free society. The whole point of liberty is the opportunity for self-government. The exercise of one's own judgment about what risks and moral choices are appropriate for oneself is a benefit that's not really calculable in monetary terms; it is literally priceless.

The question becomes murkier when we consider behavior like smoking that actually does affect other people; the effects of second-hand smoke are well-documented. And in that case, where the behavior is not merely harming the smoker, but people around him, I can see the point of regulating the behavior. Not to protect the smoker from himself, but as a matter of public health to protect non-smokers from joining in the habit against their will. A motorcyclist or a McDonald's customer, though, isn't making other people ride without a helmet or forcing a royale with cheese down his neighbor's protesting throat. It's all well and good for New York to warn its citizens about the dangers of trans fats, but hopefully they'll have the good sense to leave the decision about what people want to eat to the people who are actually doing the eating.

Regardless of how super-sized they get as a result.

Terrorism and Terrorists

Today, in a thread over at one of my regular haunts, a fellow going by the handle redmarkYankee had some interesting things to say about how we define terrorists (see the whole post here, at post #97):

"Apart from what constitutes incitement (funding, support of 'aims',
justification of violence in the cause...), what constitutes terrorism exactly? I'm old enough to remember (and studied some of the semantics in a
Politics degree) the argument that the IRA, for instance, was not terrorist, in
the early days, when it attacked only military or political targets.

Is a Palestinian suicide bomber who attacks an Israeli military position in illegally occupied territories a terrorist, or an insurgent (using
'insurgent as the 'neutral' term - 'terrorist' or 'freedom fighter' having
opposite judgemental connotations)? What if a civilian is killed inadvertently
in such an attack ('collateral damage')? Is an Iraqi suicide bomber who attacks
US/UK occupying forces a terrorist, or an insurgent? Is it possible to be an
'illegal enemy combatant' in your own country against occupying forces? What
were the French Resistance in WW2?

A British MP (Jenny Tonge) said a
couple of years ago that she could understand how young Palestinians
could turn to violence, after a visit to Palestinian refugee camps. Is that
indirect incitement? Clearly Eck and others would be willing to use any means
necessary to defend the 1st Amendment, from their own government - are
others not allowed to use any means necessary to fight for
self-determination or against occupation? If Iraqis had risen against Saddam 5
years ago and used violence, would that have been terrorism? Are supporters not
allowed to fund, or publicly defend them? Or does that depend on "our" judgement
on the validity of the cause? It's ok for the west to fund Bin Laden and friends
when fighting against Commies, but not for his co-religionists when he's
fighting against us?.


None of this is to support AQ, or funders of
AQ, or those who advocate the bombing of civilians. It is to point out that
there are enough laws to deal with 'terrorism' already - and that we don't have
any clear agreement on what terrorism actually is, except that 'our'
definition seems to vary depending on the colour/nationality/religion of the
terrorists/insurgents/freedom fighters (delete as suits your personal opinion in
any given situation)."

I really liked this post, not least because of some of the historical context he provided in his well-taken observation about how "terrorism" and "terrorists" are defined. And, given the "Global War on Terror" that we're engaged in (or, if you prefer, the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism"), it seems like a perfectly legitimate question: who are we fighting?

Obviously, one answer is "Al Qaeda" - but this isn't as simple as it looks, because a lot of smart, experienced people seem to think that whatever Al Qaeda was four years ago, today it's more of a loose affiliation of violent radical Islamists who share goals and maybe training, but don't have any specific hierarchical structure. And, given the way that the ongoing occupation of Iraq has drawn violent would-be martyrs from across the globe like a flame draws moths, it's by no means a sufficient explanation of who, exactly, we're fighting.

It's thorny. As redmarkYankee pointed out, depending on the definition we use for "terrorism" there doesn't seem to be much distinction between, say, the French Resistance and the Red Brigade, except that the Resistance were "good guys" (from our perspective, because they fought Nazis), and the Red Brigade were "bad guys" (from our perspective, because they were violent commies). But it's both unsatisfying and circular to say that we're fighting terrorists, and terrorists are guerillas who are fighting us.

We could try to draw a distinction between between terrorists and "insurgents" based on what and who they target: a terrorist deliberately targets innocent civilians while a 'legitimate' insurgent only targets soldiers and military installations. But as a practical matter, there's frequently only a blurry line separating the two - even 'legitimate' warfare of the sort practiced by, well, us involves collateral damage to civilians. We try to minimize this, and we've developed sophisticated tactics and rules of engagement to limit civilian casualties, but the fact remains that even in the best-planned attacks (especially against an enemy that's willing to hide behind and among civilians) some innocent life is going to be lost. So it looks more like a matter of degree - "The legitimate insurgent tries to kill fewer civilians than the terrorist" - rather than a hard-and-fast rule. This is not a very satisfactory distinction, at least not to me; and it may be that no satisfactory definition exists that does not make us complicit in some kinds of "terrorism" - which significantly undermines the moral component of the justification for fighting a "war on terror." Not the practical case; self-defense is justification is reason enough for taking on Al Qaeda and its allies in some fashion. But the idea that "terrorists" and "freedom fighters" can be readily distinguished is pretty much exploded.

This too ignores the important fact that in the "Global War on Terror" we have in fact targeted very particular terrorists. We have not gone after the ETA, or the IRA; we haven't opened up a front against FARC or the Shining Path. We've gone after radical Islamist militants.

All of which suggests to me that our labels for what we're doing against terrorism and in Iraq have been (at best) misleading; and we are only fooling ourselves if we think that our enemies and everyone in the Middle East don't see clearly that our "Global War on Terror" is in practice a fairly localized "war" on radical violent Islamists. And maybe a "war" wasn't the best way to go after them.

Toward a Coherent Political Philosophy (Part 1)

In response to my post regarding Grover Norquist and his theory that what holds the American conservative movement together is wanting "government to go away," Manny observed that "a person's poltical identity is determined by all sorts of complicated factors." I agree, wholeheartedly, and I think it's worth wondering about some of those factors.

I've been thinking about this, off and on, at least since I was in college. With Sandra Day O'Connor's recent retirement from the Supreme Court, I've been thinking about it more concretely. One of the most common criticisms of O'Connor's performance as a Justice was that she didn't really have any principles, in a legal-theory context. This in contrast to guys like Thomas and Scalia, who have a well-defined approach to deciding cases and political views that are unusually consistent. A not-infrequent explanation for O'Connor's 'unprincipled' behavior has been that her background was in politics. Unlike the Scalias and Thomases, she'd actually had to work in a legislative setting and this exposure made her more flexible and less idealistic in her approach to the law. Sometimes, it's argued that this made her more effective; it certainly made her the decisive Justice on a range of high-profile cases.

And yet, there is something attractive about having political views that are more than ad hoc reactions to current events. As Manny observed, the roots of our political opinions are complex, and it's not always clear why we think the things we do. We frequently fall back on post hoc rationalizations for views we haven't really thought through, just because "our side" holds a position on a particular issue. This can lead to some really weird places; how many people support the death penalty but oppose abortion, or vice versa? It seems to me that it would be worthwhile trying to come to some coherent political or policy principles that make practical sense and don't seem to contradict one another.

Some problems immediately present themselves, though. For one thing, is it possible, or desirable? The world is a complex place, and the fact of the matter is that principles only get you so far - if we follow principle blindly, we often wind up doing more harm than good. Perhaps the best political principle is O'Connor's mixed bag of compromise and moderation - it's not consistent, but it can be an effective way to make small steps forward. But toward what goal? That's not at all clear.

It's also possible that there is no set of political principles that are logically consistent and sound as a matter of practice. Libertarianism, for example, is impressive in its logical rigor but inhuman in any kind of strict application. I'm going to try, as far as I can, to examine my own political beliefs and see whether I can find some kind of sense to them, or if they're just a hodge-podge or mutually contradictory opinions that I've gleaned from who knows what sources and that need some reevaluation.

Grover Norquist Explains Conservatives

In this week's New Yorker, John Cassidy has written a profile of Grover Norquist. It's an interesting read - Norquist is an entertaining, smart, and very powerful conservative and Cassidy does a good job of explaining (or frequently, letting Norquist himself explain) what he's about and how he acquired and maintains his influence. One passage in particular caught my attention (unfortunately, the full article appears not to be available online, but you can get a sense of the thing here):

"Norquist's theory of American politics is disarmingly simple: liberals want something from the government; conservatives want the government to leave them alone. During the Roosevelt-Kennedy-Johnson era, he says, the Democratic Party prospered because it delivered things its constituents demanded: stronger labor laws for union members; retirement benefits for seniors; and affirmative-action programs for minorities. The reason the Republicans have replace the Democrats as the ruling party is that they cater to popular distate for the federal government.

"The guy who wants to be left alone to practice his faith, the guy who wants to make money, the guy who wants to spend money without paying taxes, the guy who wants to fondle his gun - they all have a lot in common," Norquist said one day this spring in a taxi going from George Bush International Airport in Houston, to the George R. Brown Convention Center, where the National Rifle Association was holding its annual convention. "They all want the government to go away. That is what holds together the conservative movement."

Now, this is interesting in itself because Norquist is a prominent and successful conservative activist. He's obviously had a lot of success turning his ideas (among them his idea of what holds the conservative movement together) into action. At some level, then, he's right, as a practical matter, or he wouldn't be successful. But is he really "right" about this, or has he simply been very successful at persuading a lot of people that he is?

Take, for example, his assertion that liberals want something from government, while conservatives want government to leave them alone. This is a nice bumper sticker, but does it really explain why many conservatives are in favor of an aggressive American foreign policy that demands the robust use of our military to achieve foreign policy goals? Does it explain why many conservatives are comfortable with increasing government funding to religious groups? Does it explain why many liberals are in favor of repealing or reducing criminal charges for petty drug crimes? Does it explain why many liberals are in favor of permitting gay people to have the same opportunity to marry that straight people enjoy? The answer is, of course not.

Conservatives and liberals alike think that government should do some things, and not others. The disagreement is over which things government should do. This is very different from "wanting the government to go away." Norquist has been successful at spreading the "conservatives want to be left alone by the government" meme, but it's not an accurate statement of conservative practice. Likewise, the idea that liberals "want something" from the government is a gross distortion (at best) of the more-accurate idea that liberals believe government should do more than conservatives do. The liberal motive for this is not simple selfishness (although eventually, liberals believe that government action of the kind they prefer will benefit everyone).

A clear example of this is the social conservative movement, which is opposed generally to the permissiveness of American culture. Nobody is telling Christians how and when and where they must worship. Nobody is telling them that they can't pray on their own whenever the spirit moves them. They can send their kids to Christian schools, or homeschool them; they can watch what they like, when they like it; they can move to communities filled with similarly-minded people if they so desire. What they actually want from government is more interference, not less: more money for religious groups, more oversight of television and radio broadcasts, more regulation of personal relationships, more interference with the personal exercise of moral agency. How this relates to Norquist's formulation can only be explained by the fact that many social conservatives actually do feel threatened by secular American culture. But this sense of threat is a far cry indeed from government-sponsored oppression of the kind that would make them natural allies of, say, the NRA (who indeed do want the government to stop regulating the possession and sale of firearms entirely). Indeed, with self-described evengelical Christians running the White House and Congress, it's hard to see where the government is anything but an ally of the social conservatives.

And yet, it's indisputably true that many social conservatives themselves believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that what they really want is less government interference with their lives. I can only attribute it to this: that Norquist has been incredibly successful at making conservatives believe they want the same things he does.